


the sun burned soft

by gothicornqueen



Category: South Park
Genre: M/M, Self-Harm, i have not written anything in five years so help me, sooooo many space metaphors, very briefly mentioned but warned for anyways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 04:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15453021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gothicornqueen/pseuds/gothicornqueen
Summary: He's supposed to be too young and too stoic feel this intensely, to know exactly what all this means and to make sense of it, but Tweek is supposed to be too young to wage a neverending war against his own mind, so in some sick way he figures it balances.(Craig really did just plan to drop off the homework and check on his sick boyfriend.)





	the sun burned soft

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TeamAlphaQ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeamAlphaQ/gifts), [Ethanol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ethanol/gifts).



> Dedicated to TeamAlphaQ (for making me feel like I could create something worth existing), Ethanol (for being my internet husband and making me cry with your reaction), and Vulren (for being basically my brain twin), and all three for being so amazing when I got the courage to show this to them. Shout out to the entire SC server for just being epic. Love you guys. ♡

Craig squints up at Tweek’s window, trying to make out any sort of movement,and inwardly curses their teachers for loading him up with every bit of his boyfriend's homework. Didn't they understand what ‘sick’ meant? It meant ‘not up to their bullshit today’.

Still, he finds himself trudging up the familiar path to the Tweak’s front door, the loose snow that had yet to be shoveled up crunching under his shoes. They would probably try to make Tweek do it tonight, no matter how sick he is.

(He ignores the fact that no matter how hard he pretends not to give a fuck, he'll probably be back later with their snow shovel after dinner to take care of it himself and save Tweek the trouble, because when it comes to Tweek, he isn't any good at pretending.)

He sniffles, the cold biting at his nose with every breath, and shifts his backpack so he can free an arm to knock. The doorbell glows faintly, uselessly in the early evening. In the three years he's been dating Tweek, it's never worked. Craig isn't sure if his parents are too lazy to fix it, or just too crazy.

There's no sign of stirring from inside the house, so he knocks one more time, mostly for show. The Tweaks are probably still at the coffee shop, ignoring their _own son_ while he's sick. He wouldn't put it past them. Tweek’s family was a special kind of fucked up, even when it came to their son. _Especially_ when it came to their son.

Dropping his backpack, he unzips the front pocket, digging around until his fingers close around the lanyard Tweek had given him for his keys last Christmas.

“You're always, nngh, losing them in your pockets,” Tweek had explained, hands fidgeting more than normal until Craig had taken one into his own. “And it made me think of you.” It was a simple thing, decorated with a repeating picture of the Horsehead nebula, but he loved it. And Tweek was right, he _did_ lose his keys a lot. Plus, the single key already carefully hooked on the end was a present on it's own. When Craig had asked what it was, his boyfriend had twitched harder than normal, green eyes darting everywhere before fixating on him with an intensity he still wasn't totally used to. “I trust you.”

The honesty of the answer had thrown him. He may have hugged Tweek tighter than normal. He _definitely did not_ tear up a little. If anyone ever asked how he had a key to Tweek’s house, he would just flip them off.

It was their memory, coated in snow and the taste of peppermint hot chocolate and the way the cold wind of Colorado in winter turned Tweek’s cheeks pink but he had smiled like Craig's reaction meant everything. It wasn't for anyone else to know.

Unlocking the door, Craig slips inside, kicking off both his shoes in the entryway so he didn't track slush through the entire house. “Tweek?”

No answer. He doesn't really expect one, and off how dark the house is, he was dead on that the Tweaks just left their son his own while sick. Still so wrapped up in their coffee shop that it doesn't even seem to _matter_ they have a son except for free labor. It makes him hate them just that little bit more.

He leaves his backpack at the base of the stairs- sure, he’ll leave the work for Tweek, but it'll just work him up right now, and he doesn't need that. Not while he's sick.

A loud crash comes from upstairs, pushing Craig to take the last few steps two at a time. _That_ doesn't sound like anything good, especially since Tweek is home alone, and he can't deny the way it feels like his stomach has twisted itself into knots out of worry. “Tweek?” He yells it louder this time, bracing one hand on the wall as he swings around the corner. Still no answer.

Tweek’s room is nearly on top of the stairs, but the feet feel like miles, the seconds like days, when he hears a soft, strangled groan from behind the door. He doesn't bother to knock, there's nothing they need to hide from each other and Tweek _has_ to have heard him.

The room looks like a tornado hit it.

Which isn't too far off its usual state, but the chaos is only amplified today- the lego sculptures his boyfriend built last weekend are smashed, drawings and paintings ripped off the wall then shredded across the floor, the bedside table knocked over, and in the center of it all is Tweek.

There's a thousand things wrong with the image of the blond in front of him, the way his chest heaves with every breath, the chunks of hair yanked into rough spikes, but the most pressing thing is his teeth sunk into his arm, tiny rivulets of blood dripping down his skin. Craig crosses the room in three steps, grabbing Tweek’s arm as gently as he can to pry it away. “Tweek, stop.”

Tweek startles violently at the touch and releases his arm with a strangled noise, leaving a blood smear across his lips. Craig kneels in front of him, keeping his eyes fixed on the bite mark embedded in the pale skin and not the wide eyes staring at him. “We need to clean this.”

“You're real.”

 _That_ snaps his attention back to Tweek's face, those green eyes staring at him with that same bone-shattering intensity as Christmas, a fixation that knocks the wind out of his lungs metaphorically if not literally. It's easy to see the rings around his eyes from this close, the bruising and the redness. “I thought-”

Tweek's voice cracks, rough and torn already from what he can guess was probably a screaming fit, the whirlwind of emotions that seems to constantly rage inside him leaking out in sound. “Oh Jesus I'm losing my mind, I keep _hearing_ things and _seeing_ them and- and-” His eyes squeeze shut, shoulders hunching up around his ears, teeth sinking into his lower lip, and Craig thinks maybe he's several kinds of fucked up because Tweek is absolutely beautiful to him even now.

“Breathe.” He doesn't think about the reminder, the words spilling past his lips without any sort of consent because _this_ part is familiar, _this_ part he can do without thinking, even when everything else feels tilted and strange. It feels like time or the universe is holding its breath while Tweek catches his, or maybe _he's_ the one holding it and the world is just waiting for him to notice.

Craig notices Tweek's breath more, the way he forces it to slow down at the reminder, _in-four hold-four out-four_ . Then those eyes were open and back on him, too intense to be real. He doesn't need to prompt the conversation anymore, they've done this enough. “Sometimes it feels like my brain is trying to escape,” Tweek whispers, voice soft, like any word spoken too loudly will shatter everything around them. Maybe it will; he's always been the one more aware of the atmosphere around them. “Or maybe I'm trying to escape it. I don't _know_.”

His voice cracks again on the last syllable, eyes darting every way but towards Craig's. “It's like it's this constant _war_ in my head and sometimes it's just all so much a-and,” Tweek inhales sharply, the fingers of his free hand twisting tightly in his shirt, pulling the fabric as taught as the air around them. There's tears pricking at the corners of his eyes and it feels like a sledgehammer to Craig's ribcage, aimed straight past bone to crush the delicate organs inside. “And it isn't right to ask you to pick up the pieces all the time but I'm so fucking scared of the idea of losing you-"

It strikes him before Tweek can even finish the sentence. He's supposed to be too young and too stoic feel this intensely, to know exactly what all this means and to make sense of it, but Tweek is supposed to be too young to wage a neverending war against his own mind, so in some sick way he figures it balances.

Clyde's story of his first kiss with Bebe is so highly embellished he's not totally sure what of it is real or isn't, but he knows first kisses are supposed to be more romantic, more shy, more picturesque than kneeling on the floor of your boyfriend's trashed room with your hand wrapped around his arm to keep the bleeding slowed while he tears up over his internal battles.

Craig kisses him anyways, because he's never cared about ‘supposed to’.

Feels the raw parts of skin where Tweek has chewed on his lips, the faint scars. A little chapped maybe, like they all are during the winter. Pulls back to see those wide green eyes, a galaxy of glowing oxygen trapped in front of him. The three words he wants to say beat against his teeth, try to slice apart his tongue, but right now, right here doesn't feel _right_. Tweek is still too worn from his battle, so he says a different set, tries to pour the meaning into them just as well.

“I won't leave.”

For a moment Tweek just stares and fear crawls up the base of his spine, settles in his crushed ribcage like lead or poison and he doesn't know which.

Then his boyfriend _smiles,_ with a choked off laugh that's honestly the most beautiful thing Craig's ever heard, and when Tweek rests their foreheads together, eyes closed, eyelashes brushing his cheeks, he thinks of the sun. Of warmth and heat and a self-sustaining chemical reaction. Of red giants and black holes and the inevitability of destabilization, an expansion that will devour everything around it when it eventually begins to burn itself out. He wonders, briefly, if that's why Tweek is like this, if he's a star forced into human form, doomed to burn itself out, to consume everything around it to try and sustain.

He wonders if he would even mind being consumed.

The room around them feels too big and too small all at once, like everything in the universe has pulled in to this one space and moment to surround them, drawn by Tweek's gravity, the pull he can't escape either. The stillness broken only by their breathing.

He knows the illusion will break. They'll move, clean Tweek's arm and room and start his homework. He'll go home for dinner, come back with his gloves and snow shovel to be met at the end of his self-appointed work by a mug of hot chocolate and a smile like a solar flare. But for now, this is all that exists, all that matters. And that's enough for him.

Craig closes his eyes.


End file.
